Historic Jewelry - Palaeolithic age

The human species loves to adorn itself with loads of jewelry. Well, this may apple more to the female species than the male species. The human species does it to enhance its looks or look more beautiful than fellow human beings. It may also be done as a means to attract potential partners who might be interested in them. And more importantly, it just makes one feel good himself.

Some of the ornaments are symbolic – like wedding rings which suggest that a woman or a man is married and that any other possible relationships might not be possible with any other partner. Both Men and Women alike have started to engage in fashions like multiple piercings and earrings. Have you ever thought about when such self-decoration originated?

Are there meanings and interpretations behind such jewels? Is that true that we started wearing beads, necklaces and earrings as our self awareness increased due to evolution? The earliest jewelry was one of bits of bones, skulls, shells and other personal ornaments discovered by archaeologists. This type of jewelry dates back to 40,000 years and before.

During this age, people believed in theories such as life after death, spirits, good and evil which led them to attract the good spirits and ward off the bad ones. These were used to protect themselves from spirits of evil. These ornaments were used to ward off evils. Some of the ornaments are necklaces, bracelets, piercing people with bones, skulls, shells etc. These are the amulets that were used during those periods.

During these ages people used to paint their bodies with red ochre which was considered the earliest of cosmetics art. They used to line their eyes with kohl as that was believed to protect them against a force called the “Evil Eye.” Even today, amulets are found in large numbers. That is what that makes people wear crosses around necks, the Star of David, claddagh rings etc. These are worn in order to attract good fortune and let bad luck not get into your ways.

Now as evolution has taken us to different customs and culture forms, amulets take the role of providing only good luck or mere attraction in bringing people’s attention towards us. Black magic or mystic through jewelry is no way a possibility these days though we may not be sure of how much truth they held in the Paleolithic age.